The Ethics of Government Privatisation in Nigeria

This paper seeks to determine whether or not the divesture of Nigeria’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) by the Federal Government of Nigeria (FGN) is ethical. Towards this end, it employs an analytic methodology to undertake a conceptual examination of the divesture of Nigeria’s SOEs by the FGN. The paper’s findings are:(1) A large proportion of the Nigerian citizenry is opposed to its government’s privatization policy.(2) A conducive socio-economic environment for privatization is lacking in Nigeria.The paper concludes that although privatization in general may be a “good” policy, it is ethically wrong for the FGN to privatize some (and perhaps most) of its SOEs, given the absence of a conducive socio-economic milieu. Key Words. Privatization, Nigeria, ethics, public enterprises, economic efficiency, socio-economic environment   Thought and Practice: A Journal of the Philosophical Association of Kenya (PAK)New Series, Vol.3 No.1, June 2011, pp.87-11

A review of the new Africa: dispatches from a changing continent by Robert Press

The New Africa: Dispatches from a Changing Continent is written by Robert Press and provides a very rich and extensive coverage on the place of the individual in the struggle for political as well as personal freedom in Africa. The book’s leitmotif of human rights and the human spirit in Africa, which runs throughout the book is parsed out into three themes: democratic struggle and a fight for political freedom (Chapters 1-3); world lessons in intervention and responding to humanitarian and political crisis (Chapters 4-6); the fight and struggle for personal freedom of one kind or another (Chapter 7). The book not only examines the individual in the context of socio-political and historical events, but also looks at the role various individuals have played in changing the face of African politics in the 1990s. It is an important book for those interested in the history and contemporary discussions on democratic movement in Africa and African politics, in particular on the different connections between politics, human rights and freedom in various parts of the continent.The book focuses mostly on East and West Africa and employs the story-telling and narrative techniques in highlighting the role played by various actors in Africa politics and the extraordinary steps that they took to eke out and win freedom both for themselves and their countries. It is both analytic and illustrative and uses pictures from photographs taken by Betty Press, the author’s wife. The analytic flavor of the book is highlighted numerously in the way it draws on arguments, allusions and themes that are discussed by some prominent philosophical and literary writers. For example, it discusses Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Blaine Harden’s Africa to address the question of why the rest of the world perceives Africa’s image as bad. It draws on the Frostian themes in Robert Frost’s poems, “The Road Not taken” and “Death of the Hired Man

Post-modern thinking and African philosophy

I want to do a couple of things in this essay. First, I want to articulate the central direction that postmodern thinking or philosophy (or postmodernism or postmodernity) takes. Second, I want to present a brief sketch of African philosophy, focusing mostly on some aspects of African ethics. Third, I want to gesture towards the view that while postmodern thinking seems to suggest that African philosophy is a legitimate narrative or “language game” it could be argued that given its central ideas and doctrines African philosophy may be open to some of the worries facing modern thinking (or modernism or modernity).KEYWORDS: Post-modern, modern, modernity, African philosoph

Political Reparationists and the Moral Case for Reparations to Africa for Colonialism

This article is situated within the context of present discourse on reparations to Africa. It theoretically engages with one kind of the arguments for reparations to Africa for colonialism that have been made by politicalreparationists; namely the moral argument for reparations. The core of the moral argument is that colonialism developed the West and underdeveloped Africa, and for this Western nations have particular moral obligations to pay reparations. The article argues generally that political reparationistsneed to pay attention to the moral force with which the reparations argument is framed, and in particular that it would enhance and contribute to the overallpursuit of successful reparations claims if political reparationists endeavour to clearly articulate the normative framewor

IBPP Research Associates: Ivory Coast

This article - Opinion: Ivory Coast: The Moral Questions in General Guei\u27s Presidential Dreams - was posted on africanewswire.com by E. Edwin Etieyibo on August 16, 2000. A copy of the article could not be provided for download because copyright permissions were unavailable. The article should be read in the context of General Guei losing power and fleeing Abidjan on October 24, 2000 in the aftermath of fraudulent campaign tactics, fraudulent announcement of electoral results, and an ersatz example of People\u27s Power. The author noted that African leaders guilty of similar alleged corruption had not fared well